


Is that how we do this 'Friday afternoon hangouts' thing?

by violasarecool



Series: Homestuck College AU [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Collegestuck, Gen, Humanstuck, Swearing, but like you know just the basic stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-13
Updated: 2014-04-13
Packaged: 2018-01-19 01:36:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1450474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violasarecool/pseuds/violasarecool
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Sup guys."</p><p>"Sup," Dave said.</p><p>"Sollux!" Terezi shifted at the foot of the couch and turned her head toward the sound of his voice. Sollux grinned. "You will not <i>believe</i> the amount of complaining I have had to put up with over the last few hours."</p><p>"If he claimed not to believe it, I wouldn't believe him," Kanaya said dryly.</p><p>.</p><p>Just an average day of shenanigans among what are technically adults whose maturity level should <i>not</i> allow them to have that kind of responsability. Seriously, who authorized this?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Is that how we do this 'Friday afternoon hangouts' thing?

**Author's Note:**

> A bit of a more-fun-than-plot introduction to the world of this college au.
> 
>  
> 
>   
> 

 

 

"Do you think my sister's hot?"

Sollux paused his music, and pulled his headphones down to rest around his neck. He flicked a piece of white-blond hair out of his face. "What?"

Dave rolled onto his stomach, sinking his elbows into the couch. "You heard me. My sister. Hot. Do you think?"

 "...because fucking with sentence order always helps comprehension." He rolled his eyes. "And yeah I suppose, but I mean I also think Kanaya is fucking terrifying with a sewing needle."

Dave smirked. "True say."

Sollux watched as Dave scrolled through music on his iphone, a large percentage of which was some shitty remixes of popular songs—although, to be fair, a small percentage of those were some goddamn amazing remixes of songs he'd never heard of. "So, any particular reason you asked, or were you just curious as to how many people are checking your sister out at any given moment?"

Dave shrugged. "Just wondering."

"Because I think you're forgetting one important fact: I get all the ladies. If I really needed some hot female action, I wouldn't go for your sister, who is already taken."

"Yeah, I wouldn't either."

Sollux shot him an exasperated look. "Well, fuck, it could be just a coincidence, but could that possibly be because...  _She's your sister?"_

"Maybe. But you fucking know I meant if I were you."

"Do I really."

"Uh, let me see... IQ of who-even-gives-a-shit says yeah."

"Please, like that has anything to do with decoding some of the ridiculous things you say."

"Like you wouldn't say the exact same thing given the chance."

Sollux grinned. "Probably." He pulled his phone out of his pocket to pick a new song, and was just scrolling past the B's when the front door slammed open and Terezi waltzed in.

"I'm here on serious business, so stop flirting with each other for two seconds and listen up."

"What, run out of gummy worms already?" Dave said without looking up. "I'd be more inclined to help you out there if you'd learn to, you know, knock."

"If you want to stop people getting in without knocking, why don't you just, you know,  _lock your front door_?" She advanced on them, her bright ginger hair swaying with each step. "This is about the ten bucks you owe me, Captor. Or are you too stingy to pay me back?"

"I don't know,  _Pyrope,_  I think I'm too busy flirting with Dave to listen to your outrageous slander. What do you think, Dave?"

"I'm pretty sure—"

Terezi slapped a hand over his mouth. Or approximately where his mouth was. "Don't you start," she said, and grinned as he shoved her hand away. "Anyway, Sollux, I was just joking about you and Dave, because I know you have a thing for  _Feferi_ ," she said, waggling her eyebrows in his general direction.

"That's a fucking lie," Sollux said, folding his arms and leaning back against the couch. "Save your slander for people with fewer functioning brain cells."

"Riiiiiiiight." He shrugged, not saying anything, and she sighed dramatically. "Come on, Tholluckth, I'm putting a lot of effort into thith. Thee, I'm even imitating your lithp."

Sollux rolled his eyes. "Imitating the lisp I don't  _have_  anymore is sure to get you on my good side, yeah," he said, but he reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. "Here," he said, shoving a ten in her hand, "don't spend it all on faygo."

"Ew," she said, wrinkling her nose, "yeah right." She walked to the door, kicked her cane away from the wall and caught it deftly in one hand. "Oh, and Dave?"

"Yeah?"

She kicked a small rectangular cartridge out from under one foot. "Be nice to the blind girl and pick up your damn games when you're done with them."

Dave rolled his eyes. "Those aren't even mine, Sollux keeps leaving them everywhere, like in the hall, and in the kitchen," he said, and Sollux watched, amused, as Dave flung accompanying gestures into the air with unnecessary force. "Also the couch." He dug one hand into the cushions, but didn't seem to find anything. "Hell if this keeps up you'll be drinking them in your coffee."

"You're one to talk, you leave headphones in every room of the fucking house," Sollux said, and tapped Dave's headphones with one finger.

"What the fuck are you talking about, I wouldn't leave my headphones lying around." Sollux gave him a look, and Dave raised both hands defensively. "Seriously dude, I thought those were Karkat's."

Terezi snorted. "Jegus, you're all just a total mess."

"Wait wait wait." Dave lowered his hands. "Did you just say 'jegus'."

"Yeah, so?"

"Are you fucking kidding me, that shit stopped being funny five seconds after you said it for the first time." Terezi opened her mouth to say something, but Dave continued. "No, fuck that, it wasn't even funny the first time you said it, just kind of ironic in an almost moronic way."

She gasped in mock horror. "So offensive. Watch, now I'm going to go cry a bathtub of salty tears to pour over your cool kid head the next time you get a papercut," she said, and flounced out into the hall.

"Drama queen," Sollux called after her.

"Mopy nerd," she yelled back.

Dave watched the front door slam shut, then flopped back against the couch. "Why is the fresh squeezed saltwater straight from tz's tear ducts going on my head, though?" he said. "Like, who gets paper cuts on their head?"

Sollux snorted.

He watched Dave put his headphones back on, and after a moment he did the same, choosing a particularly colourful techno piece he downloaded a couple days ago.

"...Feferi's pretty hot, though," Dave said.

"No shit."

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, Dave was following a crowd of third years into the giant lecture hall. He climbed up to a seat near the back, dropped his bag on concrete floor of the auditorium, and slid into a folding chair. Nothing like the feeling of deteriorating covered plastic to cushion your ass. He pulled out his laptop as the room started filling up, logged into Facebook. Already sixteen notifications and three new messages since this morning, holy fuck.

John Egbert: yeah, that sounds pretty cool actually!

Rose Lalonde: I await your return with great anticipation.

Sollux Captor: i don't know, wouldn't you rather be eaten by a fucking walrus?

 

Dave snorted. "Good god, Sollux." He replied to John and Sollux as he started looking at notifications, then reopened the conversation with Rose.

 

Rose Lalonde: Is that so.

Dave Strider: yes

                    fuck ive gotta go

                    class

                    talk to you later

                    and by later i mean during class while this guy rambles about femurs

                    dude loves his thigh bones

Rose Lalonde: I await your return with great anticipation.

Dave Strider: sup

Rose Lalonde: Back so soon?

Dave Strider: i swear to god lalonde

                    i have this class twice a week

                    it takes me exactly the same amount of time to get from home to this class every day

                    when the fuck did you think id get here

Rose Lalonde: It was merely a greeting. Would you prefer "welcome back to the rat race"? Or "how goes the crushing monotony of yet another requirement for your major?"

Dave Strider: yeah i know you have no sympathy for my tragic existence digging up dead people and their caveman iphones

                    skulls everywhere

                    well shit i think i know that one wasnt his name yorick or something

                    lookin good for a guy with worms falling out of his eye sockets

                    hey rose

Rose Lalonde: Dave.

Dave Strider: guess what 

                    im not going to ask you if you think some other dead guy looked like this

                    because thats dumb as shit of course he did

Rose Lalonde: Indeed. 

                    And is this skull as fragrant as one would imagine?

Dave Strider: yeah

                    so much fucking fragrance up in here

                    smells like roses

Rose Lalonde: Roses.

                    In the spirit of not disrupting the lecture you're dutifully listening to, I suppose I'll resist the temptation to deconstruct that particular sentence.

Dave Strider: nah

                    aint nothing goin to disrupt this lecture

                    that guy is going like a steam engine down a mountain

                    you couldnt stop it even if you werent afraid of being hit by a thousand tons of steel

                    you dont even want to get within a mile of that fucker

                    you just ring the doomsday bell and hope to hell everyone gets out of its way

Rose Lalonde: But does even a steam engine gone wildly out of control qualify as a veritable doomsday?

Dave Strider: close enough

 

Dave glanced up at the projector screen. Sure enough, the guy was only four slides in and still talking about catacombs and shit. Even though the whole damn course was about buildings, he still managed to turn the thing around to bones. He pulled up the SAHMC student site—god did this school ever need a better acronym—and opened the slides they were looking at. He flipped through a few pages, glanced down a detailed depiction of the components of an Egyptian pillar. Wow. Boring as hell, and totally review. After flipping through a few pictures of temples (he had to admit, those were pretty badass; the giant fucking jackal-headed statues for one thing were undeniably rad) he switched back to Facebook.

 

Rose Lalonde: I'm prepared to take bets of small change and your first born child that whatever trials you have to endure in Archaeology are not worse than innumerable English students misquoting Shakespeare.

Dave Strider: why would i take a bet im guaranteed to lose

Rose Lalonde: Touche.

Dave Strider: i know where you have me beat

                    even if its in the shittiness of a class

                    ive taken enough english to know how it goes

                    any hope of finding something interesting in that area is deader than dead

Rose Lalonde: My condolences.

Dave Strider: thanks

                    the funeral was long as shit

                    it rained all day like some cliche ass metaphor for the pain of dealing with idiots every day

                    but at least we can say we buried the guy

Rose Lalonde: "All the world's a grave, and all the men and women merely gravediggers."

Dave Strider: wow lit quotes and morbidly depressing shit all in one

                    weve hit the lalonde jackpot

Rose Lalonde: And without putting more than a few cents of metaphor into the casino machine. Truly your lucky day.

Dave Strider: wait

                     hold the fucking banana phone

                     youre not even studying shakespeare

                     old man will has shitall to do with kid lit

Rose Lalonde: Perceptive as ever. 

                     I'd say that I'm not sure what connection could possibly be made between As You Like It and The Hobbit, but an endeavouring student may make any connection they wish with less-than-adequate proof.

Dave Strider: well the furry footed little shits are a metaphor for humanity

                    and fuck knows will the bard wrote enough about people

Rose Lalonde: It's almost as if humanity was the most self-aware species he had to work with.

Dave Strider: exactly

                    he could have written about dophins

                    those smartasses

                    or fuck even rats are smarter than humans

                    running around those hugeass puzzle mazes

                    i mean goddamn they solve shit with their noses i wouldnt have a hope in hell of even starting

Rose Lalonde: They do have the evolutionary advantage of both whiskers and tiny claws.

Dave Strider: small enough to fit anywhere and sneaky little fuckers

                     what else do you need out of life

Rose Lalonde: Wings would be an advantageous development.

Dave Strider: so bats is what youre saying

                    final form is bats

Rose Lalonde: Yes. The most intelligent and physically versatile creature on this earth is the bat.

Dave Strider: kcool

                    so vampires

                    are they a step up or step down

Rose Lalonde: A step down, naturally. 

                    Given that we've already established bats' superiority over humanoids, what possible advantage could transforming into one hold?

Dave Strider: the whole blood sucking thing is pretty sweet though

Rose Lalonde: Undeniably. However, the existance of blood-sucking among non-fictional bats renders the fictional Vampire's skillset irrelevant.

Dave Strider: well shit

                    i see the headlines now

                    unemployment rate rising as vampires are ousted by vampire bats

                    new less fictional species willing to work for lower wages

                    in other words vampires are royally fucked

Rose Lalonde: A typical case of immigrant job market flooding.

Dave Strider: yup

 

Dave glanced up at the slide projector screen, then back down as he flipped to the slides on his computer.

 

Dave Strider: hang on i think were doing something we havent covered yet

                    brb

 

After half an hour of dutifully taking notes on the guy's long-winded elaborations, however, he began to lose interest, and brought Facebook back up.

 

Dave Strider: hang on i think were doing something we havent covered yet

                    brb

Rose Lalonde: That's probably just as well. We're going over one of our many additional readings soon, and I will likely not be back on before I leave class.

                    See you later.

Dave Strider: fine go offline

                    just when i could use a cure from all this boredom

 

He reopened the chat with John, but he was still offline.

 

Dave Strider: are you actually still paying attention

                    i guess your prof is at least marginally interesting

                    well if you get a second from your busy as fuck classtime you could like drop me a message or something

                    thatd be cool

 

Dave glanced down the chat list, and noticed a green circle by Jade's name. Online.

 

Dave Strider: working hard

Jade Harley: i was just checking something for class smartass  :p

Dave Strider: checking something for class

                    on facebook

                    uh huh sounds legit

Jade Harley: i am!!

                    we have a group project in chem, i was checking on my group

Dave Strider: only babies need to be checked on

                    are you changing their diapers as well

                    shoving pulverized food in their screaming mouths

                    teaching them the ways of the world

Jade Harley: basically :p

                    except the diaper thing because thats gross

Dave Strider: but youre ok with mashed up food and whiny red faced babies crying streams of snot and salt water

Jade Harley: well food already gets pretty mashed up in our mouths

                    and babies arent all like that!

                    dont you like babies dave??

Dave Strider: eh

                    not a fan

                    for pretty much all of the above reasons

Jade Harley: youre being ridiculous

                    babies are ADORABLE!!!

Dave Strider: theyre underdeveloped little fucks that scream all the time and shit everywhere

                    if there was a machine that made them grow up instantly id be all over that

Jade Harley: ok first of all ew

                    why are you obsessed with the gross stuff???

                    but second

                    even if we could make a machine that made babies grow up biologically

                    youd be left with a bunch of adults who couldnt speak, or maybe even walk!

                    it would take years to reteach them motor skills and language and stuff

                    which would sort of defeat the purpose of making them grow up fast in the first place :p

Dave Strider: youre going all science on me again

                    im just sayin

                    if in the future some sci if shit happened and babies didnt have to be a thing

                    id be cool with that

Jade Harley: alright mr cool kid

                    i know youre not allowed to be excited about science 

                    because its against some cool kid rule or something

                    so i forgive your lack of interest in the subject :)

Dave Strider: thanks

Jade Harley: though some of the pseudo sciencey stuff you talk about with rose is almost as complicated as my actual classwork :p

Dave Strider: what

                    she shows you our conversations

Jade Harley: sometimes ;)

                    you had a pretty good theory going for that gumball flintlock

                    i mean, if you forget that physics exists :p

Dave Strider: what do you mean flintlock

                    i wanted a glock

Jade Harley: .......do you even know what that is?????

Dave Strider: its an old pistol isnt it

Jade Harley: no

                    a flintlock is an old pistol

                    a glock is a semi automatic

                    geez dave how could you not know that??

Dave Strider: tell me the difference between a machete and a katana and were even

Jade Harley: ..............

                    fine, you win :p

                    ive been out nerded

Dave Strider: more like outclassed

Jade Harley: please, guns are more classy than swords

                    swords are just giant knives!!

Dave Strider: what are you talking about swords are classy as fuck

                    smooth and fast and quiet

                    more than can be said for the small explosion you set off every time you fire a gun

Jade Harley: well at least guns make heads turn ;)

Dave Strider: i said classy not showy

                    swords get shit done

Jade Harley: ...................

                    and guns can shoot the person next to you to remind you that class is over

                    so maybe you should leave now :p

Dave Strider: what

 

Dave looked up and saw that students were shoving laptops and notebooks into their over-stuffed bags. The teacher of course was still talking, so he glanced back down at his own laptop.

 

Dave Strider: why dont you take your own advice and leave then

Jade Harley: i did!

                    im in the atrium

                    rose says hi

Dave Strider: does she

Jade Harley: actually she said something more like

                    a heavy book could take you both out while youre arguing about the benefits of swords versus guns :p

                    oh

                    she says she said merits

                    WHATEVER

Dave Strider: sounds more like it

Jade Harley: mmhmmmmm

                    so are you coming???

Dave Strider: alright alright

                    give me a few minutes

Jade Harley: so sloww :p

 

Dave shoved down the lid of his laptop and dropped it in his bag before he was tempted to reply and start yet another ridiculous exchange that Rose would find some way of using against him later. As he followed the trickle of students just leaving the classroom, however, he was slightly mollified in picturing Jade trying to type on the Facebook Mobile app and walk at the same time. That never worked out well.

* * *

"Hey." Dave dumped his bag on the table, and sat down. "You guys got food yet?"

Jade stopped typing to hold up a yellow tupperware container. "Rose made avocado salad."

Rose held up a forkful of green chunks. "It's a good recipe, you should try it."

"Ew," he said, wrinkling his nose, "are you sure that's not radioactive? Looks pretty whack to me."

Jade rolled her eyes. "It's healthy."

"Oh god, even worse."

"Considering the garbage you eat, it might do something toward balancing out your diet," Rose said.

"Fine," Dave said, "I can see I'm outnumbered here. Skype me a copy, and I'll leave it in the kitchen and see who bites first. My bet's on Karkat."

Jade raised her eyebrows at him. "Are you sure about that? Last time John left a piece of paper sitting in the kitchen, his history homework ended up in the garbage. He complained about it for weeks."

Dave waved a hand at her. "I'll make the font really big so he sees what it is before he throws it out. Guarantee he'll make it, and add like a shitton of pineapple and thyme as well."

"...Ew."

"Remind me never to let you into our kitchen," Rose said.

"Hey, if it means I don't get roped into slave labour I'm cool with that," Dave said, standing up. "Be right back."

When he came back fifteen minutes later with a wrap, Jade was still bent over her laptop, with Rose peering over her shoulder.

"So what are you working on, anyway?" he asked, tossing his food on the table, and leaning over Jade's other shoulder to see the screen.

"History," she said, making a face.

"If you get rid of that last phrase, it might make more sense," Rose said, pointing at the screen.

"Wait, don't you have history with John?" Dave demanded.

"And Vriska."

"...Which is right after this," he said, flopping back into his chair.

"I was busy, ok, don't give me that look!" she protested.

Rose glanced at her, smirking.

"God, you two are the  _worst_ ," Jade huffed, and closed her laptop. "I was rewatching some Squiddles, ok?  _We_  were watching Squiddles," she said, glaring at Rose, whose smile broadened. "But I also had a few readings to do!"

"Uh huh," Dave said. He unwrapped his pita, and took a bite. Greek and feta, so damn good.

"Please, as if you don't spend most of your time out of class watching shitty movies on Youtube."

"I think you're confusing me with John. It's  _your_  cousin who watches all that manga."

Jade shuddered. "Ok, you're doing that on purpose, your brother watches anime, surely he wouldn't let you  _misname_  it."

Dave just leaned back in his chair, and took another bite of lettuce and tortilla.

"Trollllll."

"Nah, that's more tz's style," he replied, still chewing.

"Ew, Dave, don't talk with your mouth full!"

"She really is a remarkably good troll," Rose said.

"It's a talent," Dave said. "One day they'll monopolize successful trolling, and she'll be rolling in the boon bucks."

"Boon bucks?" Jade asked.

"Boon bucks," Rose said. When Jade continued to look confused, she added: "Invented adjective. Just as a 'boon' means an excess, to have 'boon bucks' is to have an excess of money."

"In other words, new descriptors for Dave Strider, courtesy of the 'English Sucks' foundation," Dave said.

"If you hate English, why don't you ask Nepeta to teach you French?" Rose asked, smiling.

Dave made a face. "Hell no, only language worse than English is French, everyone knows that. But fucking with English, now, that's radder than even Maryann and her Spanish shindig."

"Maryam."

"Whatever, I'm just saying, there are a shitton of languages better than English. Hell, Klingon is better than English, and that's some nerdy shit right there."

"You know how to speak Klingon? Consider me surprised," Rose said.

"I  _consider_  that ridiculous. Lalonde can't tell the difference between Striders and nerds who actually speak made up alien shit? If her warlock powers were that bad, the sky would probably come crashing down on your bowed heads." He picked at a small piece of gutted tomato. "Your heads are bowed because madame magician just got her shit wrecked," he added.

"Hardly an impressive feat, of course, given the considerable prowess of the one Dave Strider."

Dave narrowed his eyes. "You just used the word prowess, should I be waiting for a Freudian shitbomb?"

"You do realize the word has a non-sexual connotation."

"Yeah, but the only people who use it like that are 15th century monks writing fuckhuge elogies about how goddamn brave their local knight brigade was by saving their asses from an army of..."

"Zombies?" Jade suggested.

"What, no, I was gonna say like pikemen or something, why the hell would there be zombies in the 15th century?"

Jade narrowed her eyes. "Why does the century change what kind of made up stuff you insert into your ridiculous metaphors?"

"It just does, ok, you can't mess with time, that shit's sacred."

"Ok, fine, no zombies in  _ye olden times_. How about dragons?"

"Hahah, an army of dragons, that's ridiculous."

"Well then  _you_  come up with—"

"No, it's great, it's so ridiculous it's perfect." Dave glanced at his half-eaten wrap, then shrugged, and tossed it on the table. "So a bunch of knights take on a bunch of dragons. It's about two knights per dragon, and they're dancing circles around these fire-spitting shitlords, trying not to get  _trampled,_  because there's hella dragons hoofin' it 'round, can't even stay in the air because there's so much dragon per square inch. And the battle gets real close to the knights' castle, and they're like 'oh shit, our castle's gonna get crushed', so they send a message up to the people still in the castle who bring out these hugeass tubs of boiling oil, and the knights clear out real quick right before they dump the lot on the dragons. So the dragons are careening around howling an shit because getting scalded  _really fucking hurts,_  but then,  _then,_  they set the whole lot on fire, and they burn into a pile of ash and bones and shit."

Jade's fork hovered halfway to her mouth, a piece of tomato dangling off the end; Rose had pulled out a book and was sifting through its many pages.

"Hey!" Rose looked up. "So, point is, the knights beat the shit out of the dragons, and everyone's like 'yo, prowess'," he added.

"I believe that was adequately communicated with your initial metaphor," Rose said, as Jade put her fork down.

"Yeah but this was better."

"Longer is better?" Rose asked.

"Well ye—" He narrowed his eyes. "Goddammit, Rose."

"That was entirely you," Rose said, returning to her book.

"I'm pretty sure," Jade said, as Dave opened his mouth to retaliate, "I mean, I don't know what kind of physics exists in your  _imaginary world,_  but I'm  _fairly_  sure if you set a whole dragon on fire, even covered in oil, it wouldn't just instantly burn up into ashes."

"Now you're criticizing my science?"

"Calling it  _pseudo_ -science would be giving it too much credit," Jade said. "It's like science's pathetic baby brother... It's the youngest child of a huge family, so it... cries, a lot, so people will pay attention to it."

Rose held up a hand, and Jade high fived her.

Dave wrinkled his nose. "' _Cries a lot_ '?" Jade shrugged, checking her phone. "You could have said  _anything,_  the dog steals its toys, the little shit gets his ass kicked by an older brother..." He watched Jade closed her laptop and put it in her bag, then picked up his own bag off the floor. "If pesudo-science is the younger bro, big bro's gotta—"

"Who says science is a guy?" Jade asked, raising her eyebrows.

"Ok, sister, whatever," he said, following as they started to make their way toward Jade's next class. "But—"

"Perhaps a child may be forgiven for crying occasionally," Rose said, walking next to Jade down the narrow hall, so Dave was forced to hover by her right shoulder to keep them in earshot.

"Noooo," Jade said, "Dave's firmly opposed to everything adorable."

Rose shook her head, glancing back at Dave. "A crime worthy of several years torturous labour at an animal shelter, perhaps. I'm sure someone like Tavros could set you up."

"Oh god, you make it sound like the shittiest date ever."

"Don't be so enthusiastic, Dave, someone might think you're desperate," Jade said, grinning.

"Hah." 

The narrow hall opened into a wide intersection, and Jade waved as she broke away to join the group of students funnelling into the auditorium. Dave nodded to her and turned away, Rose's accompanying shape visible out of the corner of his eye. They pushed outside, forcing the door against a strong wind that hadn't blown nearly as much grit into their faces the last time they'd ventured from the heated buildings.

"You've acquired a charming new look," Rose said, reaching to pull a leaf out of his hair.

He swatted her away, combing a hand over his head. "It's fucking freezing," he grumbled, shoving his hands into his pockets. 

"A situation worthy of your alliterative skills."

He shrugged. "For a freakishly fearless fanatic, you fail to fool me with your," he snapped his fingers impatiently, "fuck, uh... facade."

Rose smiled. "Fluent fabrication for a fledgling flourishing formulaic frivolty."

"Yeah, well, I'm the master of  _formulaic frivolty,_  that's pretty much the best description of rap I've heard all day."

"You admit to its fundamental frivolty?"

"Well, I mean," he stopped to slap at the pedestrian crossing button as they waited for a red traffic light. "I could talk in rap all day, but even for a rap  _master_  like me, it's still more effort than just, yanno, talking."

"It certainly has no practical merits in itself."

"Yeah, not really. But... no, wait, hold on, what if—" He looked up; Rose was already partway across the street. He hurried to catch up. "But imagine if you used rap as a kind of access code. Like, someone gets their hands on your shit, they can't just steal a key to unlock it, they can't even beat a pass code out of you, they need to fucking  _rap_  before they can get in."

Rose glanced up, contemplating the idea. 

Or maybe just thinking of how best to shoot it down. "You gotta admit it's a  _great_  idea."

"It's novel, I'll give you that. But how would it work? Would any kind of rap do? How would you program a machine to recognize rap? Would it have to rhyme? In which case, would poetry be an adequate substitute?"

"No, it'd—"

"Presumably it would have to recognize the timbre of your voice, the inflection being the main form of differentiation between rap and other forms of rhyming lyricism... What if the intruder prepared a lyric sheet to read from? Are cheat sheets allowed?"

She paused for a moment, and Dave quickly cut in. "I'm all in favour of cheats, but they're called cheat sheets for a reason, and cheating ain't allowed."

"Do you plan on personally enforcing this rule?"

"Hell yes, can't just let anyone go messing with the system."

"Which returns its properties to the original system which requires you to be present to protect your belongings with a 'shitty sword'."

He narrowed his eyes. "Maybe I'll find a way of personally enforcing it through overpowered tech."

"Mm." Rose dug in her bag for her copy of house keys as Dave talked.

"Sure, it might take ten years to perfect the voice recognition shit to do something as complicated as rap, but by then they'll probably also have a pretty damn good cheating detection system developed to put off the little shits still in school." Rose opened the door, and Dave followed her in. "Of course, by then, if those little shits haven't figured out a new way around the rules what's even the  _point?"_

"Remind me, what was  _your_  point?"

"Cheating, protecting my shit, rap, how far back do I have to go, when did you zone out?"

"About when you started alliterating," she said, already halfway down the hall, heading toward the kitchen.

Dave threw his arms in the air. "Seriously? I just..." Then, sounds of shouting echoed down the hall from upstairs, and he made a face at the floor. "Really," he muttered. "Alright, this should be good." He kicked his shoes off, tossed his bag onto the couch, and headed upstairs. His hands padded the air as he tiptoed toward Karkat's room, where light spilled into the hall.

"Will you two shut the fuck up? We get it, he messed with your shit—"

"He broke a needle of a very specific size I had to order from Hong Kong."

"I'm real sorry 'bout that, Kanaya, I never meant to get all up in your grill."

"See, he even apologized, isn't that good enough, can we all just go back to whatever the hell we were doing?"

"Never  _meant_  to," she hissed, "that doesn't sound like an apology to me."

"If you would care to wrestle your raucous sphincters closed for  _just a fucking minute,_ "Karkat cut across the two of them, and Dave was now close enough to see into the room where he stood between Kanaya and Gamzee. "It'd be fanfuckingtastic if you would accept that he's sorry and we could bury this shit."

Dave pushed the door open. "What the fuck is a sphincter?" he demanded, and Karkat turned to him, rolling his eyes at Dave almost before he was fully facing the door.

"'Sorry' doesn't mend expensive tools," Kanaya muttered, as Gamzee said "Yeah, I was wondering the same thing, brother. You're using some pretty fancy vocabulary, words are all up and getting all motherfuckin uppity over here."

"Your mouth, dumbass," Karkat replied as Kanaya slunk out of the room, and Dave wasn't entirely sure if he was talking to him or Gamzee. "Try using context next time before you crack your brainpan trying to sift through your pitiful heap of accumulated knowledge."

"Do you, like, read a thesaurus in your spare time trying to find the words that make you sound most like a tool?"

"Hahah, that's really fucking hilarious, why don't you try reading something besides your phone screen some time so you expand your vocabulary to words not relating to memes and celebrities."

"I'm think I'm gonna up and head on the motherfuck downstairs," Gamzee said. Karkat glanced at Dave, who shrugged and followed.

"I have way more interests than 'memes and celebrities', come on," Dave said as the stairs creaked under their weight. "I don't even see where you get celebrities from, other than like keeping up to date on shit, and really, it doesn't take a fat guy in sweats watching tv all day to know that Michael Jackson kicked the bucket."

"And I don't see what the hypothetical celebrity-stalking man's  _weight_  has to do with the metaphor," Karkat said, as they walked into the living room, where Gamzee was already sprawled across the couch.

"I dunno, dude probably never leaves the couch."

Karkat rolled his eyes. "That's the weakest excuse I've ever heard," he said, heaving one of Gamzee's legs out of the way so he could sit down.

Dave collapsed at the end of the couch. "Whatever. Mariokart?"

"Hell yes. Gamzee?"

"Sure thing." He pulled himself upright. "How about we be starting with Rainbow Road?"

"What?" Karkat paused in the middle of pulling the controllers out from under the TV. "Come on, you suck at rainbow road, that's the hardest fucking track."

"Yeah, but I like watching all the colours go by," he said with a loose grin.

Dave snorted, and Karkat chucked a controller at him. Dave caught it in one hand, and Karkat shot him a withering glare. Dave raised his eyebrows, Karkat raised his middle finger. Dave opened his mouth—

"Are you two quite finished, or should I fetch a tape recorder?"

They both froze, and looked over to the doorway, where Rose stood.

"I'm sure it could be quite entertaining," she added, a smile playing across her face.

"Nope," Dave said, and Karkat grabbed another controller, tossing it on the couch next to Gamzee. "We're playing Mariokart right now, though, want to join?"

"Maybe later," she said, glancing back toward the kitchen, "I was simply making sure no one else had invaded the premises since our arrival."

"Well I don't see any hoards of angry troops, so I guess it's safe to go make out with your girlfriend in our kitchen, that's cool, we'll just be here separated by a very not soundproof door."

"Mm."

He glanced up in time to see her turn away, looking considerably less smug than she should for someone who held the sanctity of their kitchen between soon-to-be-interlocked lips.

That was a metaphor that didn't need dwelling on.

"What track are we gonna pick after Gamzee's driven off the Rainbow Road a few times, then?" Dave asked.

"Whatever you want, man," Gamzee said.

Karkat turned away from the doorway, frowning. "I don't know, pick something yourself."

Dave caught a glimpse of a red skirt whipping around the far side of the kitchen table as Rose retreated, pulling the door closed behind her, and he glanced at Karkat, who wrinkled his nose with a bemused look.  _Who even knows_. 

Dave shrugged, and turned back to the TV, scrolled through the races. "Moo Moo Meadows sounds like a party. All those cows, and grass, and trees—"

"Moo Moo Meadows," Karkat muttered, "yeah, a baby party, maybe."

"A baby party." Dave raised his eyebrows at him. "You really got nothing better than that?"

Karkat drew himself up and fixed Dave with the full magnificence of a Karkat glare. "Yes,  _Dave_ , a fucking baby party, full of weak turns and pathetic roadblocks that wouldn't even pose a challenge to a wriggling, undeveloped mass of pink cells."

"Karkat, bro, you must be thinking of a different track," Gamzee said, and he seemed to be lying upside down now, his huge feet propped against the wall, a mess of black hair and face paint resting against the cushions. "That track's pretty much all and up the best track there is."

Though hopefully not  _getting_  face paint on the cushions.

"I thought you said Rainbow Road was your favourite," Karkat said suspiciously.

Gamzee nodded. "Sure, but the meadows have this great winding path, all turning you in circles until you don't know where you're going, and you're just following the cows, because they know the way better than you. I don't know how they do it, man, but they've got an  _amazing_  sense of direction."

"The cows go back and forth across the road," Karkat said, narrowing his eyes at Gamzee. "They are literally programmed to do nothing else, there's no  _actual_  way of progressing if you do that."

"I dunno, somehow I manage to get pretty far every time. I tell you, it's—"

"Do not even  _think_  of saying what I know you're going to damn well say, it's not anywhere even close to  _approaching_  a miracle, it's a miracle you manage to watch us play these games practically every fucking day and still not understand how they work."

"See, miracles," Gamzee said, with a slow grin that made Dave almost think he was just winding Karkat up.

Probably not, though. "He'spretty damn good at Candy Crush," Dave said as he selected the Moo Moo Meadows track.

Gamzee stretched an arm back toward the coffee table for his controller. "Thanks, brother."

"It's a matching game for miserly 30 year olds living in their parents' odious basements, there's no skill involved at—" Karkat stopped mid-sentence, narrowed his eyes as the screen transitioned to a dirt road bordered by a huge green meadow. "For fuck's sake, pick another track you moron."

"Too late," Dave said, watching a pair of meandering cows in the distance as the count down started. "But you can just sit there while we do the race if you're afraid of it."

There was a shrill whistle as they took off. "Like hell I am."

* * *

Sollux leaned back against a sagging beanbag, idly picking styrofoam beans out of the pocked fabric with one hand, thumbing down a list of variables on his iphone with the other. Funny, he could have sworn he'd already fixed the bug where everything slowly started turning more yellow the more functions you executed, but apparently not.

"What the fuck is your problem," he muttered, panning back to the main program, scrolling through different commands. His phone made a hollow echoing sound like a submarine, and he glared at it, studiously ignoring the little white envelope that simultaneously appeared in the corner of the screen. "I'm busy, stop messaging me." It pinged a second time, and he was tempted to silence his phone, but not enough to actually  _do_  it.

He had gotten through about ten more fuck ups in his coding (the yellow problem seemed to be because of a faulty indentation that left the function to run into infinity), when Karkat burst through the door.

"Careful of the stairs," Sollux called, smirking as Karkat lost his footing and stumbled a little down the last three slightly taller stairs.

"First of all, shut up, second,  _shut up,_ " he shot Sollux a glare that did nothing to wipe the grin off Sollux's face, "and third, there are people here, get off your high fucking horse and come join us, Rose said she texted you like five times."

"Did she really?" He raised his eyebrows. "I thought it was only twice."

"Five times, two times,  _whatever,_  just stop being an antisocial termite and come play a few rounds."

"Termites are actually pretty damn social," Sollux said, pocketing his phone, "they divide labour and basically have fuckhuge nanny parties to take care of the little ones. They're more social than  _you_  are."

"Wow, shown up by termites, guess who doesn't give a shit," Karkat said, climbing back up the stairs.

"Well you sound more than a little pissed off, so it can't be you," Sollux said, ducking under Karkat's raised middle finger into the room. "Sup guys."

"Sup," Dave said.

"Sollux!" Terezi shifted at the foot of the couch and turned her head toward the sound of his voice. Sollux grinned. "You will not  _believe_  the amount of complaining I have had to put up with over the last few hours."

"If he claimed not to believe it, I wouldn't believe him,"Kanaya said dryly.

"Well apparently I don't have a choice," Sollux said.

"Choices are best left to those who are familiar with the situation," Rose said, one hand idly trailing down from where she sat perched on the arm of the couch to rest between Kanaya's shoulders. Sollux looked away, smirking slightly, as Kanaya glanced up at Rose.

He sat on the couch between Dave and Kanaya; Karkat, following him, drew up short.

"Well make some fucking room, I'm not three inches wide."

"Sit somewhere else," Dave said, "there's not that much room."

"You're shitting me, this couch is huge, just move  _up,_ " he said, stepping onto the couch between Dave and Sollux.

"Oh come on kk, don't be ridiculous—wow ok," Sollux said, shuffling up against Kanaya as Karkat planted himself firmly between them.

They sat like that for a moment, no one saying anything. Sollux looked down at Terezi, sitting on the floor. "Well, can't just leave you sitting there," he said.

"Don't you dare," Dave started, but Sollux had already picked Terezi up; she shrieked, laughing, as he pulled her into his lap.

"Sorry, not enough space to sit on the actual couch, but there's the secondary people couch to make up, feel free to just lie on us," he said, grinning.

"Ok," she said, and her grin was more than a match for his as she stretched back across Karkat and Dave.

"Wow, really?" Dave said.

Karkat poked her in the shoulder. "Could you fucking not?"

"Nope."

On Sollux's other side, Kanaya smiled and picked up Terezi's legs, swinging her fully onto the couch. "Don't fall off."

"Thanks, Kanaya."

Sollux tapped his fingers on one of Terezi's freckled arms. "Jesus, tz, you're paler than I am."

"I didn't think that was possible," Rose said, eyebrows raised.

"Oh, shut up, miss actual-and-literal albino, you're definitely paler than I am." She smiled and held out an arm, and he rolled his eyes before putting his next to it. "See, paler."

"I don't know, I think Sollux is paler," Kanaya said.

Karkat snorted. "Yes, hahah, no one here knows how to go outside, fucking lol."

"Hey, I go outside!" Terezi protested.

"And we are proud of the sacrifices you make for vitamin D," Kanaya said.

"I dunno, I have a pretty goddamn amazing tan," Dave drawled, waving a dark hand.

"Your natural skin color does not count as a fucking 'tan'," Karkat said, rolling his eyes.

"Uh huh." Dave ran his other hand through his currently sandy-brown hair. "You could just stop being jealous and start leaving the house more than once a day."

"Fucking rich coming from the guy who suggested we stay inside and play mariokart."

Sollux glanced to his right just in time to see Rose and Kanaya exchange looks that were equal parts amused and exasperated. "Speaking of which," Rose said, picking up her controller, "shall we get back to the game?"     

"Well I don't know about the rest of you, but I have trouble driving my kart psychically," Dave said, pointing at the table where the three other controllers lay. "Bit tied up here." Terezi laughed.

"Goodness, what a tragedy," Rose said, "whatever shall we do?"

"Just toss the damn things over here," Karkat grumbled.

"Certainly," Rose said, smirking as she slid off the arm of the couch and picked up the controllers, tossing two at Karkat and Dave. "Sollux, Kanaya, are you playing this round?"

"I'm in if there's enough controllers," Sollux said, glancing at Kanaya.

"I might as well sit a few out," Kanaya said. "If my score gets any higher, the boys might have trouble maintaining their male power fantasy."

"All the more reason to play," Rose said.

Sollux snorted. "I have no delusions, your motor skills kind of outstrip mine by a few miles."

"To be honest, I'm surprised your hands haven't seized up from repetitive typing injury," Rose said, handing the controllers to Sollux and Kanaya, then sat back down.

"Hah, like anyone here except like Terezi would be exempt from that if it was  _actually a serious danger_."

Terezi grinned. "Voice commands, bitches."

Sollux watched as Karkat started up the Wii. "Wasn't Gamzee here earlier?"

"Yeah, he left to go to Tavros's," Dave said.

"Ah."

"Alright," Karkat waved his controller at the screen, the blue hand whizzing across the opening screen. "Shut the fuck up and pick karts and shit."

Once they started racing (Sollux insisted they pick Rainbow Road again, more for the pleasure of watching Karkat's frustration with the sharp turns than anything else), Rose left to make another cup of tea, and Terezi wandered off in search of candy. The room was quiet for a while, a stillness punctuated only by the sounds of power-ups and the characters' occasional exclamations.

"Who's winning?" Out of his peripheral vision, Sollux saw Rose leaning on the doorframe.

"Right now?" He chuckled. "Like three CPUs, but that's only because  _someone_  is so damn far behind he managed to knock everyone off the edge at once even though he's in like 12th place."

Rose laughed, taking up her seat on the arm of the couch again.

"Not my fucking fault you got in the way," Karkat hissed as Kanaya's baby kart loomed behind Karkat's, and he yanked his controller to one side, narrowly avoiding sending his kart off the edge of the multicoloured road and himself off the edge of the couch. "Kanaya, I swear to fuck, if you knock me into oblivion a third time you're not invited here ever again."

"Nah, bro, this isn't an autocracy, Kanaya's cool," Dave said, as he sent a green shell flying. It connected with Karkat's kart, and knocked him off the edge.

"Fuck!" Karkat glared at the screen, smashing the buttons on his controller while his car disappeared into the void.

"Thank you, Dave," Kanaya said, as Terezi wandered back in. "I appreciate you sticking up for me when one of my best friends refuses to."

Karkat rolled his eyes. "Don't be so fucking dramatic, you know I was joking."

"Were you? It's sometimes hard to tell," Terezi said around the stick of a bright red sucker.

She sat down at the foot of the couch again, and Karkat jabbed a finger at her. "You shut your mouth."

She stuck her tongue out.

Rose watched as Dave jerked his controller out of the way of Kanaya's kart. "The driving skills of this group leave something wanting. I can't believe any of you have your licences."

"Says the girl without her licence," Dave said.

"Says the girl who drives better than you without a licence," Rose said.

"How about some cool as shit water for that second degree burn," Sollux said.

Karkat sent his kart careening around a loop in the track. "How about we all shut our goddamn traps and play Mariokart."

"Says the boy who up to a few minutes ago left his car to languish on the rainbow road," Rose said.

"Says the girl who left the last race unfinished to stew some fucking leaves in hot water," Sollux said.

"Stop it with the 'says'!" Karkat exclaimed.

Dave leaned back, holding his controller on his knee. "Tea is pretty lame."

"You could not be more wrong," Kanaya said. "Tea is the shit."

"Nope, I'm with Sollux here, leaves in hot water don't sound hella good."

Sollux raised an eyebrow. "I never said I was against  _tea_."

"Yeah but you—ok, whatever, nevermind then, I can see when I'm outnumbered."

"Oh!" Terezi sat up a little against the foot of the couch. "Aradia, Feferi, and Nepeta are coming sort of soon."

"What?" Karkat threw his hands in the air. "You couldn't have told us this a little fucking sooner? How many people are coming here today? Are we just going to invite the whole neighbourhood over?"

"Oh shush, I forgot, ok?"

"So what reminded—" Sollux started, then laughed. "Right, Nepeta, tea."

"Nepeta doesn't have a monopoly on tea," Kanaya said.

"Yeah, we went over this, your girlfriend drinks tea, fantastic," Karkat said.

"And so do I."

"Same," Terezi said. "And so do you, so shut up about it already."

"I wasn't the one who brought it up!" Karkat protested.

Dave threw down his controller. "Boom, motherfuckers."

"Wait, what?" Karkat peered at Dave's portion of the screen. "You're  _done?_ When the fuck did you get so far ahead?"

"Used a lucky star while y'all were arguing about wet leaves."

Terezi laughed. "It's called a super star, dummy."

Karkat frowned, concentrating on the screen, and Dave leaned back, stretched against the couch. "Lucky star, super star, whatever, I don't think it really matters what you call a bunch of pixels that give you a powerup."

"True," Kanaya said as she crossed the finish line just ahead of Sollux.

"Fuck." Sollux dropped his controller in his lap. "You got lucky."

"Luck is just an excuse," Kanaya said, handing her controller to Rose.

"I hate that fucking track," Karkat grumbled, abandoning his kart entirely. "Rainbows."

"Excuse you, rainbows are the best," Terezi said, reaching up to poke him, and her finger found his knee.

Karkat shoved her hand away. "Yeah, well you've never played Rainbow Road, or you would be put off of mothershitting rainbows for life."

"What the hell are you talking about? Of course I've played Rainbow Road, that track's been in Mariokart for  _ages_  before i went blind, at least since those stupid old cartridge games that Sollux's been hoarding."

"You mean the N64 games?" Sollux rolled his eyes. "I don't hoard those specifically, there's just been a bunch of them turning up recently."

"Whatever, smartass, I'm just saying you should keep them off the floor if you don't want them broken by my blind feet."

"Your feet don't even have eyes," Dave interjected.

"My face has eyes, what's your point?"

"No but, see—"

"I  _can't,_  dumbass."

"—shut up, that was a figure of speech—your feet can't be blind if they  _don't have eyes_."

Sollux pulled his legs up onto the couch. "How would her feet even conceivably have eyes?" he asked. "You'd need a serious nervous system to somehow connect in all that muscle and shit."

"Not to mention," Rose added, "that the adaptation would be rather pointless unless she was destined for an environment where the primary points of interest are no more than a few centimetres from the ground."

"Why. The fuck. Are we talking. About this."

Everyone turned to look at Karkat. Except Terezi.

"Can we focus on the actual  _important_ questions here, like how many people are going to be trashing our house today  _Terezi would you make some kind of fucking indication you're listening to me how the hell am I supposed to tell at least say something._ "

She tilted her head up. "So rude."

"Well, I guess that works. But—"

Dave held up a hand. "First of all, you need to calm the fuck down, we have more people over than this while you're in class. Second," he said, raising his voice as Karkat attempted to start a new stream of protests, "we didn't actually invite anyone, they just started showing up. But third, if the girls are coming over, the least you can do is tell John to bring Jade with him when they get out of class."

"Me? Why the fuck is that my job?"

"Hey, you were the one who wanted to make this shit be organized. What is it they say, if you want it done as unshittily as possible, do it yourself?"

"Unshittily," Kanaya said. "I think you've reached a new low in compound words."

Rose caught Dave's eye. "What if you added—"

"Nah, but with—"

"Or perhaps—"

"Shut up both of you," Karkat said. Rose shrugged and leaned back across the back of the couch. "So you're saying your plan is to invite everyone in the general vicinity into this tiny house and hope we don't need three or five ambulances by the end of the night."

"I already told you, bro, there is no plan, you're being way too anal about this. It's just a Friday afternoon and people feel like hanging out, is that a crime?"

"Please, if it was a crime, I would know about it," Terezi said, and Dave chuckled under his breath, raising his hand to meet Terezi's extraordinarily well aimed high five.

"You're not even anywhere  _near_  becoming a legal officer of the law, how would you know anything about anything? No, nevermind, don't answer that, I don't care." Karkat rubbed a hand down his face. "Fuck, fine, I give up. But I'm calling Eridan, and I guess Tavros and Vriska, god help me. And what the hell, why not invite Equius too, is that how we do this 'Friday afternoon hangouts' thing?" He stopped. "Oh god, is this going to become a ritual thing, are we going to do this every fucking Friday? Tell me this isn't going to become some sick ritual, there's no shitting way this will work out well for anyone. Do we have a first aid kit here? Actually, are we even sure the landline is still connected because the last time it got cut off no one noticed for three days."

"That's because we have cellphones," Sollux muttered.

Dave leaned over, ignoring Karkat's continued stream of chatter. "Did he drink your coffee this morning or what."

"No fucking idea."

"Do we need to break out the booze or is he going to chill out in the next half hour."

"Rules three and five: Karkat is never chill, and booze is always welcome."

"You got it."

"You bet I fucking do."

"...Is he still talking?"

"Yes."

"Psst, Rose."

"Dave."

"Tell Terezi to shut him up."

"Already on it."

Ten seconds later, Karkat was enveloped in a blanket cocoon on the floor.

"How the hell does she even manage that," Dave muttered.

"Wrapping his mouth shut helps, I'd imagine."

* * *

Nepeta, Feferi, and Aradia arrived at the same time as John, Jade, and Vriska, and there was a long period of kerfuffle while both parties shed bags and shoes into the steadily growing pile by the door. After about twenty seconds of Karkat trying to organize the chaos, Sollux pushed him into the kitchen to make snacks, and returned to shove people's possessions into the closet (it was his turn to clean the hall this week, and damned if he was going to  _also_  clean up whatever mess was incurred by people tripping over their own shit).

"Cute bag!" Jade said, pointing at a moss-green backpack, its white cat ears drooping slightly over its painted face.

Nepeta flipped the top flap over and pulled out her phone tablet thing. "Thanks! It's kind of adorable, isn't it?" She closed it, and patted its button nose. "Found it on etsy."

Jade's eyes widened. "It's  _hand-made?"_

"Prooobably with a sewing-machine," she said, grinning, "but—"

" _When_  you two are done," Vriska said, arms crossed. "Kinda hard to get around here," she added, stepping around Sollux, who was kicking about five pairs of shoes into the closet. He rolled his eyes.

Nepeta stood up, and Jade laughed. "I bet Nepeta can find you another one just like it but in blue."

"Yawn," Vriska said, miming just that. "Spiderman is way cooler."

Sollux sighed and scooped up the others' bags; Aradia nodded at him as she walked by holding a cat carrier, while Feferi stopped to help him shovel the rest onto the closet floor.

He glanced back and saw John struggling with something in his bag. "Do you need help with that?" Jade asked, smothering a giggle as John stuck his arm further in.

"It's my pencil-case, it's stuck on my glasses!"

"You're... wearing your glasses," Jade said, as Nepeta followed Vriska into the other room with an exclamation: "But cats  _eat_  spiders!"

Sollux gave John another glance as he closed the closet. "He did  _not_  bring those shitty plastic nose glasses to school."

Feferi grinned. "Pretty sure he did," she said, raising her eyebrows at John as he shoved the bristled nose back in with his elbow.

John grinned back, then glanced up as Jade pulled his bag out of his hands and tossed it into the closet. "You're keeping Sollux waiting," she said.

"Eh, whatever, he can put his own shit away, he lives here," Sollux said, forcing the closet door closed with his foot. Jade and John joined the others in the living room, and Feferi waited for him in the doorway. In the living room, people were already occupying every single piece of furniture as well as various parts of the floor, and he waved a hand at Feferi, suppressing a shudder as he headed down the hall. Not to side with Karkat's blithering senseless panic, but that was a fewtoo many people.

In the kitchen, Karkat was stirring a bowl of white goop with such force that it was only narrowly avoiding spilling over the edge. "What's the green shit?" Sollux asked, peering over his shoulder, and Karkat shoved him back with his shoulder.

"They're chives, moron, now step the fuck back unless you want a face full of yoghurt."

"Touchy touchy," Sollux said, and met Karkat's scowl with a smirk. "No one's going to skin you if you leave more than a minute of silence untouched by curse words." He grabbed four bowls from the cupboard with one hand, and a several bags of chips with the other.

"Well that's some  _fucking_  hypocrisy right there." Karkat held out a hand, and Sollux reached back into the cupboard for a few smaller bowls. "Besides," he said, setting one on the counter, "not like every other idiot doesn't use the same damn vernacular." He spooned some dip into the bowl.

"I'm not entirely sure how that's an argument  _for_  it, but whatever."

"Oh, shit."

"Hm?"

Karkat dropped the bowl on the counter and strode across the kitchen. "I never called Eridan."

"Ew, do you have to?" Sollux shook a bag of barbecue chips into one of the large bowls with more force than necessary, and a several tumbled onto the counter.

"Uh, yeah," Karkat said, pressing the speaker phone button, "he's my friend too, you're just going to have to suck it up, princess." He set it on the counter and went back to the dip.

Sollux exhaled noisily.

The phone clicked as Eridan picked up. "If this is about last week, I said, I'm not—"

"Yeah, no, but hi," Karkat said. Sollux snorted.

"Why am I on speaker phone."

"I'm making shit that kind of requires my hands. And the reason I'm making said shit corresponds to why you should get over here."

"Ok... why's that? I mean, other than just because, otherwise you wouldn't be makin' such a fuckin' deal out of it. Oh, god, tell me you're not makin' decorations, is it someone's birthday or somethin', because I don't want to see another fuckin' balloon in my life."

Sollux raised an eyebrow at Karkat, but he just waved a hand at him and turned away. "No, god no, it's just food, there are a fuckton of people coming over for some reason." 

Behind him, the hall door opened, and Dave walked in. "Have you guys seen—"

"Shh!" Karkat glared at him, and pointed at the phone on the counter.

"Yeah, that's a phone, what—"

" _Now_  who's here?" Eridan demanded, his raised voice causing the sound to buzz.

"Just Dave, ignore him. Anyway, get over here, and..."

Dave slid around the other side of the kitchen table, as Karkat carried on. "Yo," he muttered. "You seen Rose's bag? She sent me on a  _magical adventure_  to find some special knitting needle."

Sollux crumpled a half-empty Cheetos bag closed. "Pree sure it's still under the table, no?"

Dave crouched down. "Oh, yeah." He pulled the purple bag toward him and started rummaging through its contents.

"Ok, so Eridan, Gamzee, and Tavros are coming," Karkat said, putting the phone back on its charger. "And," he sighed, "I guess, did anyone call Equius?"

"Nep says he's busy with 'workshop stuff' Fridays," Sollux said.

"Oh." Karkat opened the dishwasher to stow the now-empty mixing bowl. "That's, yeah, ok." He turned back around, and his gaze fell on Dave, crouched on the floor. "The fuck are you doing down there?"

"Well as much as I love repeating myself, this elaborate story might get old eventually." He heaved the bag up, and stood up. "Rose sent me to get her a—oh shit." A several green flakes fluttered out of the bag. "Aw man."

"Leaves?" Sollux peered over his shoulder as he frantically attempted to shove handfuls of what looked like dried leaves back into a plastic bag. 

"I don't fucking know, I think it's a cat thing?" He leaned back slightly to get at some under his knees, and nearly lost his balance, sending a shower of leaves into the air as he flung an arm out to steady himself. 

Sollux stepped back quickly. "Watch it."

Dave scraped most of the leaves into the bag, and tied it off, then brushed off his arms. "Gone? Hair ok?"

"No." Karkat pointed toward his right ear. Dave quickly ran his hands through his hair.

"It's fine, you gigantic narcissist," Sollux said, back at the counter, balancing the four bowls of chips in his arms.

"Yeah, whatever." Dave rubbed his nose, then picked up Rose's bag again. "Gonna put this with the others, be right back."

Sollux waited for Karkat to grab the dip and open the door ("I can  _basically_  carry four bowls at once, but you try balancing them like the leaning tower of little-to-no pizzazz while also opening a door"), and they headed back into the living room through the near door.

"Hey, careful!" Nepeta rolled away from the door as it nearly opened on top of her, pulled several sheets of paper toward her.

"Jesus christ," Sollux said, stepping around five different depictions of what looked scenes from Lion King 2. Terezi was sprawled next to Nepeta, and he kicked her foot lightly as he made his way to the coffee table. "There's already little enough space without you two wallpapering the floor."

"You're just jealous of our beautiful art," Terezi mumbled, her mouth holding a yellow crayon pressed to the paper.

Sollux shook his head. "Uh huh." He made his way over to where Feferi and John sat on the floor, John shuffling a deck of cards. Vriska watched them from an armchair with reluctant interest; Aradia, in the other armchair, didn't look away from the flicker of the TV as Kanaya flipped through channels.

John held up a card, and Feferi shook her head. "Nope, not that one either."

"Dammit!" He shuffled through the deck again as Sollux sat down.

"Card tricks," Sollux said, "really?"

"I know, right?" Vriska leaned farther back in her chair. "I mean, reeeally, so lame."

Sollux smirked. "Careful, you almost sound sycophantic."

"Hah, as if—"

The door slammed open, and the chatter paused for a moment. "Whoops," Dave said, reaching over to swing the door closed again.

John started slow clapping. "Bravo, bravo! Encore!"

"As much as I love destroying our house, nah." He looked around the room. "Wow, hella people, not much space. We need like a second couch or something."

"A small apartment complex is closer to what we need," Karkat said, standing up from where he had been adding his own masterpiece to the collection of crayon drawings. Probably in the spirit of competition more than anything.

"Yeah, well, lacking that." There was space on the end of the couch, and as Dave took a step towards it, Karkat did the same.

Karkat frowned. "Don't you fucking dare."

Dave raised his eyebrows. "I don't know what you're...  _talking about!"_ They both made for the couch at the same time; Jade, on the end, shrieked, and flattened herself back out of the way as they collapsed onto the couch, limbs flailing.

"Would you two  _cut that out!"_ Jade exclaimed.

Karkat was sprawled on top of Dave; Dave pushed against his back. "Alright sore loser, get off, I won."

Karkat heaved himself upright. "No way."

"Oh  _come on,_  you're not just going to sit on my lap all afternoon like a goddamned petulant toddler are you?"

"Kind of ironic that you're calling  _me_  the cranky infant when  _you're_  the one who refused to let a guy take his fucking seat."

"That seat had no one's name on it until I got here."

Jade buried her face in her hand. "Oh my god," she mumbled. "You're the worst."

"Yeah, hear that?" Karkat poked a finger at Dave. "Jade says you're the worst."

"Pretty sure she's talking about both of—" He spluttered as a giant fluffy piece of shit walked over his face. And then started licking his nose. "Jesus christ, Rose, what's your cat doing here??" He shoved at Jaspers with one hand, but he just started licking his hand.

"Nepeta brought him to visit. I didn't realize there would be quite so many visitors today, however, or I might have suggested it wait until another day." She leaned forward, watching as Jaspers proceeded to lick his way up Dave's arm.

Karkat batted the cat's fluffy black tail away from his face. "What the hell is it doing?"

Rose's mouth twitched at the corners. "When I asked you to fetch my knitting needles, did you happen to encounter a bag full of catnip?"

Dave grabbed Jaspers and chucked him at the floor. "A bag of what?" Jaspers started licking his socks. "Rose, your cat is insane!"

She was broadly smiling now. "Clearly you should study more herbology."

He nudged Jaspers away with his foot. "Stop patronizing me and lock up your devilbeast."

"It's like cat drugs," she added, as Jaspers pulled a large piece of crumbling leaf from Dave's pants cuff.

"He's getting high," Dave said disbelievingly, watching Jaspers rub his nose against the floor.

"Mm. Feel free to lock him up in your room while we do people things, however."

"Uh, no way." He grabbed Karkat by the waist.

"Woah what the fuck—"

"Up we go," he said, standing as he lifted him, and deposited him in Jade's lap.

"Dave!" Jade shoved Karkat sideways onto the couch almost as quickly as he could scramble off.

"Ok, John, you get to carry the cat, we're taking him to Karkat's room."

Karkat stiffened. "Why the fuck does it have to be my room?"

"Price you pay for having the neatest room. John, come on."

John held up another card: the ace of clubs. "Calm down, Dave, we're kind of busy of here. You can't interrupt a magic trick!"

"Yeah, you can, it's literally just you flipping over a bunch of cards."

Vriska laughed. "Come on, Dave, don't spoil the show just because you're too afraid to carry a little cat all by yourself."

"I thought you said you didn't—fine," he sighed, "Sollux, get your ass over here and carry this damn cat, or I swear to god I will loose it in the basement."

Sollux shrugged, and stood up. "That's an empty threat, you do that and your records are toast."

"If you fucking—"

"When you two have finished posturing," Kanaya said, pointing at Jaspers, who was now making happy spasms across the floor.

Sollux bent down and scooped him up. "Alright, get the door quick before he drug-spasms his claws into my chest."

As they left, he heard Aradia say, "Rose, next time you should really just let Jaspers into Dave's room first. He would move a lot quicker."

"Believe me, I am extremely tempted."

**Author's Note:**

> Soooo, that was the first part in this collegestuck au me and nathaylee are writing. This work was just by me, but we'll be collab-ing on some in the future, and nat will probs be writing some of her own.
> 
> (Happy 4/13!)
> 
> please _don't give me crit_ , constructive or not, even if you feel the need to point out a typo, i would appreciate it if you didn't. i do this for fun, and once i've posted something, i don't really want to think about it critically anymore. thanks.


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